The White Spell (Nine Kingdoms #10)(14)

“Léirsinn?”

She looked up at Doghail and blinked. “What?”

“I was telling you about the lad we hired yesterday.”

It was a testament to how preoccupied she was with other things that she didn’t remember having hired anyone. “Yesterday?”

“You’re distracted.”

“Trying to be,” she agreed.

“I’d ask from what, but I imagine I don’t need to.”

She imagined he was right. Her uncle’s treatment of her the day before was nothing out of the ordinary, but she feared she was reaching the point where she had almost had enough of it. Much more of that sort of belittling and she would do something she shouldn’t.

If he had perhaps struck her, she would have felt justified in retaliating. As it was, he generally just looked at her with the same sort of annoyance a great lord generally displayed after having gotten something on the bottom of his boot whilst having absolutely no idea what to use in scraping it off. She knew that look because she’d seen it worn by many great lords over the years. She’d had boot scrapers installed in strategic locations several years ago, something that had seemed like a reasonable thing to do. Her uncle had pulled the expense of it out of her meager pay, of course, but she had expected nothing less.

“Léirsinn?”

She dragged herself back to the matter at hand. “A new stable hand,” she said, reminding herself of the current topic. “How much nothing does he know?”

“I had to show him which end of a manure fork went into the straw.”

That was indeed nothing. “And just what do you want me to do about that?”

He looked at her pointedly.

She sighed. It wasn’t as if Slaidear would lower himself to train the lad and Doghail had obviously reached the end of any patience he might have had. “Very well,” she said, crawling to her feet. “Show me the damage and I’ll sack him straightway.”

“You may want to reconsider that after you think about what you’ve been doing all morning and why.” He paused. “Besides, this one . . .” He shook his head. “There’s something different about him.”

“Apart from the fact that he knows nothing?”

Doghail lifted his eyebrows briefly. “You should have seen his boots.”

Léirsinn considered. “Worn?”

“Pristine.”

She felt her mouth fall open before she could stop it, then she looked at him narrowly. “I cannot believe you hired a lad who knows nothing simply because his boots were pretty.”

“It wasn’t just his boots,” he said dryly. “Besides, it’ll take me a solid fortnight to poach as many lads as I need from other places. Another pair of hands is another pair, no matter how useless.”

“That depends on how useless,” she said grimly. Damn her uncle for his stupidity in ridding them of most of their help. “I wonder what set Fuadain off yesterday?”

“Hell if I know,” Doghail said, “and damned if I care. Just keep out of his sights for the next pair of days. He’ll blow himself out eventually.”

And that was generally where Doghail’s advice ended. He didn’t care for her uncle, but since she didn’t either, they generally left their final opinions of the man himself unsaid. As for what the irritation had been, it could have been anything from a poorly fried egg to perhaps turning over in his sleep once too often. With Fuadain, one just never knew.

“One keeps an ear to the ground and a hand on his horse to survive in this world,” Doghail said philosophically. “If you want my opinion—”

“Which I always do,” Léirsinn said absently.

“I think what set him off might have been news from Up North.”

Up North was Doghail’s term for the schools of wizardry. She had her own thoughts on Beinn òrain and the wildly improbable nature of the university there—she was certain lads went there not to learn magical spells but to waste their parents’ gold at cards and dice—but she supposed those thoughts had been shaped rather strongly by Doghail’s own opinions.

“Any ideas on what that news might have been?” she asked.

“Wizards and noblemen are fickle,” Doghail said wisely. “Perhaps Himself lost a sale.”

“That would be sufficient, I imagine.”

“Stupid might be a better thing to call it,” Doghail muttered, only half under his breath. “He sacked one lad yesterday morning for not moving quickly enough out of his path, another two for meeting his eyes, and another pair for simply breathing.”

“Excessive,” she said. Her uncle tended to fire stable lads only in pairs, so perhaps he’d lost not only a sale but the final hand at cards.

“Short five hands,” Doghail continued, “and there I was wondering what the hell I was going to do to replace them when up saunters this lad who looks as if he should be sitting at Himself’s card table instead of begging for work.”

“A gambler down on his luck, do you think?”

“Who knows? He’s there around the corner, no doubt still grappling with the mystery of the pitchfork. You won’t have trouble identifying him.”

“You aren’t coming with me?”